Warhammer 40,000: Squad CommandReview

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No grid = no good.

By Ryan Clements

The Warhammer universe is a massive, elaborate entity that spans countless models, tabletop games and videogames, among other things. Warhammer 40,000: Squad Command is one such title that inhabits the Warhammer space and attempts to deliver a turn-based strategy experience set in the grimy, blood-soaked, quasi-biblical future of Warhammer. Squad Command is truly a tragic title though, because while it possesses some genuinely good elements and occasional bursts of fun and satisfaction, there are a tremendous number of problems with the game's mechanics that mercilessly rough up Squad Command as a whole.

Squad Command, as you may have gathered from the title, is a strategy game that places you in control of up to six units as you work your way through 15 missions, generally serving the Imperium (soldiers of the Emperor). Before each mission, you can assign weapons and ammunition to your squad, survey your objectives, and then begin the battle. Most missions are punctuated by prerendered cinematic sequences with narrative exposition streaming throughout. Your overarching goal in Squad Command is to defeat the legions of Chaos that threaten the cities and people of the Emperor with their destructive and heretical ways.

Story is clearly not the focus of Squad Command, considering the fact that almost no context is given to this strife between the Imperium and the soldiers of Chaos. The cinematic elements are solid enough, with relatively impressive CG visuals to boot, but the plot itself feels pretty thin and we were generally apathetic about what was happening in this game world (you, however, may feel differently if you're a diehard Warhammer fan). The real point of Squad Command is to bring swift and fiery death to your enemies, but as we mentioned a few moments ago, doing so can be a real problem.

The game is, for the most part, presented in an isometric view of a 3D environment and controlled through a cursor interface that most strategy fans will be entirely familiar with. Each unit in your command has a set number of action points that can be used towards either moving or attacking. Once you've used up all the action points, that unit can't do anything else until the next turn. In order to attack, you need a clear line of sight between your unit and your opponent. Once you stretch the line between the two, you can spend additional action points to improve the accuracy of the attack, and then you fire.

Aiming.

With that said, let's get right into the inevitable sadness that comes from these mechanics. First and foremost: there's no grid. Strategy games rarely (if ever) work on consoles and portable systems when there's no grid; that's why most good strategy games can be found on the PC. Controlling Squad Command is incredibly awkward because your cursor can go anywhere and that's not good. This issue is further magnified by being restricted to using the D-pad for this task and not the analog nub, which would have offered more delicate control (at least). The nub, instead, is assigned to your camera control, which you rarely use.

Such a statement might sound strange to you. "Why wouldn't you adjust the camera in a fully 3D strategy game, Ryan?" you might ask. That's a very good question, and it can be answered quite easily: it's useless. When we say "camera control," we mean that you can adjust the angle of the camera slightly, but it's still fixed in the same isometric spot. You can't rotate the camera in any way, and in a game that completely relies on line of sight for attacks, this almost breaks the entire experience. We say "almost" because you can often compensate for this problem and learn ways around it when playing, but the problem's still there. There were countless instances where we wanted to see around a corner to properly locate an enemy unit, but we couldn't. Or perhaps an opposing soldier fired lethal shots out a small window, but we couldn't do the same because we didn't know where the window was. We were stunned that this seemingly obvious feature wasn't included in a game. With a full 3D environment, wouldn't it have been easy to do?